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Moving to a New Office? Read this Document Cleaning Guide

Moving office is exciting! A new location, a new layout and new business contacts!

Moving also presents an opportunity to evaluate the documents you need to store in your new office. There is no better time to do some spring cleaning and decide which documents you should take, which to shred and destroy, which to keep but digitised and which can go into long-term storage.

However, this process can seem overwhelming if you approach it without a plan, so we have developed this document-cleaning guide to help you complete this task more effectively.

Create a document inventory

You probably never realise how many files and documents have been lying around your office all these years. Old invoices, bills, paperwork and various other documents have piled up because your team is reluctant to throw away anything in case it's needed at some point.

Begin by taking an inventory of all the paper documents in your office. Be sure to include everything; all boxes, filing cabinets, desks and file rooms in the office. Determine and list the type of document and your records retention and security policy.

Segregate the documents

Now that you know how many paper documents you have and their type, it’s time to classify them into one of the following three categories:

Scan – Scan all documents which are frequently accessed by people in the office. Scanning will make these documents easy to locate and make them highly accessible from anywhere in the world. Having these records scanned will improve efficiency and save everyone time. Once you have the document scanned, you can also decide if the original hard copy should be shredded or sent to document storage.

Store – Store all documents that you are not going to access, but you must keep for regulatory compliance. Take a count of these boxes and include a retention schedule to ensure they are not stored beyond their retention period.

Shred– Shred all documents that you no longer need access to and are not required by law to retain. Paper records that you have digitised and no longer require a physical copy of can also be shredded. This process will need to be methodically carried out under supervision to ensure the records destroyed are correct and disposed of securely.

Get Expert Help From The Experts

We have helped hundreds of businesses to reduce clutter and bring organisation and system to their document storage policy. At Compu-Stor, we offer end-to-end records management solutions across different cities in Australia including Sydney, Melbourne, and Perth. We can manage the entire process for you, including packing the records into our durable archive boxes, cataloguing the records so you can track all boxes and/or files, destroying any records that are past their retention requirements and storing or digitising the required documents for long-term storage.

Whether you are looking to store your paper documents securely or need help digitising them, we have you covered. Contact us today for a free quote.